


Two Stones

by quartzen (sandstone78)



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon
Genre: Gen, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-07-19 18:02:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7372000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sandstone78/pseuds/quartzen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A 10x100 set of drabbles about two parallel stories: Sailor Pluto's childhood training with her father Chronos and his involvement in the long-ago founding of the Silver Millennium.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Stones

**Author's Note:**

> Sailor Pluto has always been my favorite senshi ^^ I was curious about Chronos, who she often names but who we never see on-screen, and about the origins of Silver Millennium. As images started coming back from the New Horizons space probe in summer of 2015, I decided to write a story about human colonization of the solar system during Silver Millennium and Sailor Pluto's training on those lonely plains of ice, and the mysterious being Chronos who had lived a lonely life there for a very long time.

The Princess of Pluto has known since she was very young that she has two fathers: her mother’s consort, who raised her, and Chronos, the father of her soul. She has only rarely seen Chronos, who lives on the surface of the small, icy world whose name she bears, the twin to Charon where her family’s Charon Castle orbits. She loves her whole family, but she is aware that her destiny differs from theirs. Her rebirth alongside that of the two guardians of Uranus and Neptune and four guardians for the young Moon Princess bodes ill for the Silver Millennium.

~

In the distant past, long before written history, humanity arose on a blue gem of a world called Earth, and there rose in particular a kingdom called the Golden Millennium. In time twins were born to the royal family: Sylvia, who held the radiant Golden Crystal, and Rhea, who bore a crystal as silver as moonlight. Peace reigned, but in even the happiest kingdom, there will be those whose gaze turns outward. When Rhea came of age, she and her guardians took to the stars, and founded a kingdom on Earth's moon: the Silver Millennium. The two kingdoms coexisted peacefully.

~

Pluto is a young world, smooth-faced. The Plains of Avernus are heart-shaped, seen from space, and an icy castle stands there. In the castle—so the story goes—there lives a god.

Snow drifts across the sky as Princess Pluto approaches the castle. Even at high noon, the plains are as dark as twilight on Earth. Chronos is waiting at the gate. He walks out to meet her. "Are you well, my daughter?” he asks. He takes her valise.

"I am well," she says, smiling, but breathless. The cold does not affect either of them. They enter the castle together.

~

It is inevitable that a peaceful congregation of humanity will attract the attention of Chaos. The twin kingdoms of Earth and its moon were no exception, and a threat arose from the deep darkness between the stars. Princess Rhea and her guardians fought valiantly, but Chaos turned to a dimension beyond the understanding of mere mortals: the dimension of time, to go back and destroy that fledgling humanity before it had even hatched.

In desperation, Rhea chased a legend, a mysterious, twilight world whose orbit wandered from the outer reaches of the solar system between the giants Uranus and Neptune.

~

Time passes. Like the Princess Persephone, the ancient daughter of Chronos and Queen Rhea and the first to bear the power of Pluto, Princess Pluto spends a season of each year on Pluto learning from Chronos, and the rest of the year with her parents, at Charon Castle and on Earth’s white moon, the home of Silver Millennium.

She trains with the brave Princess Uranus and the graceful Princess Neptune, who will protect Silver Millenium from the outer reaches of space as Princess Pluto will guard against threats through time. All the while, shadows gathered on the blue world below.

~

It is true that the manifestations of Chaos are persistent, but there are also fragments of light, of Cosmos—the other glittering star seeds of the galaxy. One of those star seeds glimmers darkly on a small world as cold and forsaken as the underworld—the distant star Pluto.

The one who lives there has the power to control time; he does not age. He has gone there for peace and quiet, and Rhea's pleas do not move him.

"There are _laws_ ," he tells her. "I cannot just turn back time as I please—why do you think I left?"

~

"Concentrate," Chronos says. "Breathe in."

Princess Pluto's eyes are closed. She breathes in deeply, the mists of time cool and clammy against her skin.

"Breathe out." She lets her breath out in a sigh, breathes in and out again, and again. Something has changed—the air thickened around her, but it wasn't air that she felt, but time itself flowing around the two of them as if they were two stones in a river. Her breath catches in her throat, and she opens her eyes in wonder at the feel of it.

Chronos smiles. "This is your heritage," he says.

~

Chronos sighs. "Are you all not needed elsewhere?"

"Our princess is determined," says the tall, blonde woman, Topaz—one of Rhea's four guardian warriors. "Once she has made up her mind, she doesn’t change it." The other three—Sapphire, Ruby, Emerald—nod knowingly.

"You said there are laws," Sapphire said. "Surely the enemy has broken them first, trying to invade Silver Millennium through time?"

"Who made them?" Ruby adds.

"They aren’t that type of law," Chronos says, exasperated. “No one _made_ them. They are laws of _nature_ —like gravity.”

"Even gravity can be defied," Sapphire says thoughtfully, “under certain circumstances.”

~

The Garnet Rod is cold in her hands, but the chill only makes Princess Pluto—Sailor Pluto, now—determined to grip it tighter. The silver-haired Queen smiles at her reassuringly.

"There are three taboos you must remember," Queen Serenity says. "You must not travel through time. You must not abandon your post at the door. And… you must _never_ cause time to stop. If you cause time to stop, it will surely destroy you."

"Yes, your majesty," Pluto says automatically. Light pulses in the depths of the Garnet Orb, in time with her heartbeat and the great pulse of Time.

~

Chronos watches in awe as the Silver Crystal’s light drives the tide of darkness back behind the great door. Rhea’s Guardians stand with her, lending her strength. Sapphire turns to him. “Now!”

Chronos hefts his silver staff. “Dark dome… _close_!” The staff’s garnet crystal glimmers, and the great Space-Time Door moves. Rhea forces the darkness through; her Guardians follow. The door shuts behind them.

It takes an eternity for Chronos’ heart to beat again. He clenches the staff, and prays the key he has given them will work.

The door opens—he catches Rhea in his arms as she falls.

**Author's Note:**

> The heart-shaped region of Pluto that I called "the Plains of Avernus" after Avernus, a lake thought to be an entrance to the Underworld, in known in the present day as Tombaugh Regio. You can see pictures of it online! What a strange and lonely place...
> 
> The names Rhea and Sylvia come from Rhea Sylvia/Rhea Silvia, the mother of the twins Romulus and Remus who founded Rome. The gemstone names of Rhea's Shitennou are the gemstones used for each of the Inner Senshi in Sailor Moon: Another Story. I imagine that the Silver Millennium being a daughter kingdom of Golden Millennium is probably one reason why the relationship between many-generations-distant cousins Serenity and Endymion was forbidden much later in time...


End file.
